poems only (no captions, no words)

[Jeff]

What I Know of God is This
by Milton Acorn

What I know of God is this:
That He has hands, for He touches me.
I can testify to nothing else;
Living among many unseen beings
Like the whippoorwill I'm constantly hearing
But was pointed out to me just once.

Last of our hopes when all hope's past
God, never let me call on Thee
Distracting myself from a last chance
Which goes just as quick as it comes;
And I have doubts of Your omnipotence.
All I ask is... Keep on existing
Keeping Your hands. Continue to touch me.

[MacCruiskeen]

On the Farm

There was Dai Puw. He was no good.
They put him in the fields to dock swedes,
And took the knife from him, when he came home
At late evening with a grin
Like the slash of a knife on his face.

There was Llew Puw, and he was no good.
Every evening after the ploughing
With the big tractor he would sit in his chair,
And stare into the tangled fire garden,
Opening his slow lips like a snail.

There was Huw Puw, too. What shall I say?
I have heard him whistling in the hedges
On and on, as though winter
Would never again leave those fields,
And all the trees were deformed.

And lastly there was the girl:
Beauty under some spell of the beast.
Her pale face was the lantern
By which they read in life’s dark book
The shrill sentence: God is love.


R.S Thomas

[MacCruiskeen]

[To be read aloud, at a fast pace and a high volume.]

Senex

Oh would I could subdue the flesh
Which sadly troubles me!
And then perhaps could view the flesh
As though I never knew the flesh
And merry misery.

To see the golden hiking girl
With wind about her hair,
The tennis-playing, biking girl,
The wholly-to-my-liking girl,
To see and not to care.

At sundown on my tricycle
I tour the Borough's edge,
And icy as an icicle
See bicycle by bicycle
Stacked waiting in the hedge.

Get down from me! I thunder there,
You spaniels! Shut your jaws!
Your teeth are stuffed with underwear,
Suspenders torn asunder there
And buttocks in your paws!

Oh whip the dogs away my Lord,
They make me ill with lust.
Bend bare knees down to pray, my Lord,
Teach sulky lips to say, my Lord,
That flaxen hair is dust.

- John Betjeman

[Perelandra]

William Butler Yeats

THE INDIAN UPON GOD

I PASSED along the water’s edge below the humid trees,
My spirit rocked in evening light, the rushes round my knees,
My spirit rocked in sleep and sighs; and saw the moor-fowl pace
All dripping on a grassy slope, and saw them cease to chase
Each other round in circles, and heard the eldest speak:

Who holds the world between His bill and made us strong or weak
Is an undying moorfowl, and He lives beyond the sky.
The rains are from His dripping wing, the moonbeams from His eye.

I passed a little further on and heard a lotus talk:
Who made the world and ruleth it, He hangeth on a stalk,
For I am in His image made, and all this tinkling tide
Is but a sliding drop of rain between His petals wide.

A little way within the gloom a roebuck raised his eyes
Brimful of starlight, and he said: The Stamper of the Skies,
He is a gentle roebuck; for how else, I pray, could He
Conceive a thing so sad and soft, a gentle thing like me?

I passed a little further on and heard a peacock say:
Who made the grass and made the worms and made my feathers gay,
He is a monstrous peacock, and He waveth all the night
His languid tail above us, lit with myriad spots of light.

[Perelandra]

William Butler Yeats

THAT THE NIGHT COME

SHE lived in storm and strife,
Her soul had such desire
For what proud death may bring
That it could not endure
The common good of life,
But lived as ’twere a king
That packed his marriage day
With banneret and pennon,
Trumpet and kettledrum,
And the outrageous cannon,
To bundle time away
That the night come.

[vanlose kid]

deleted

[MacCruiskeen]

Let It Go

It is this deep blankness is the real thing strange.
........The more things happen to you the more you can't
................Tell or remember even what they were.

The contradictions cover such a range.
........The talk would talk and go so far aslant.
................You don't want madhouse and the whole thing there.


-- William Empson

[dada]

Once upon a midnight clammy
I was playing poker with Gandorf and Sammy
Gandorf had just dealt me jacksons and fives
When I hear a tapping at my window on high.
I climbed to the attic so dreary and black
And who should I see there tapping but Brak!

Brak: I had a bad dream, I can't get back to sleep!
It had a big fat bird in it and it gave me the creeps....
The bird kept saying nevermore, nevermore, nevermore,
Hey nevermore, nevermore, nevermore, nevermore

-- Zorak Mantis

[dada]

Moot Panic Her First Blush

Indiscreet as ilk foot come knobbing,
a pleasure gruntled bulge thwart indiscreet
as velcro disarticulated,
similar yet lagging

the bannister
on the way down.

--Michael Tencer

[Jeff]

- Leonard Cohen

[lightningBugout]

Jesus got up one day a little later than usual. He had been dream-
ing so deep there was nothing left in his head. What was it?
A nightmare, dead bodies walking all around him, eyes rolled
back, skin falling off. But he wasn't afraid of that. It was a beau-
tiful day. How 'bout some coffee? Don't mind if I do. Take a little
ride on my donkey, I love that donkey. Hell, I love everybody.

--James Tate

[mentalgongfu2]

pity this busy monster, manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness
--- electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
A world of made
is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh

and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go

-E.E. Cummings

[vanlose kid]

deleted

[vanlose kid]

deleted

[mentalgongfu2]

"The Happiest Day, The Happiest Hour"

The happiest day - the happiest hour
My seared and blighted heart hath known,
The highest hope of pride and power
I feel hath flown.

Of power! said I? yes! such I ween;
But they have vanish'd long, alas!
The visions of my youth have been -
But let them pass.

And pride, what have I now with thee?
Another brow may even inherit
The venom thou hast pour'd on me -
Be still, my spirit

The happiest day - the happiest hour
Mine eyes shall see - have ever seen,
The brightest glance of pride and power,
I feel - have been:

But were that hope of pride and power
Now offer'd with the pain
Even then I felt - that brightest hour
I would not live again:

For on its wing was dark alloy,
And as it flutter'd - fell
An essence - powerful to destroy
A soul that knew it well

-Edgar Allen Poe